(Image source: Atlus.)
I’ve gone dungeon crawling with a sword in many a game but before playing Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, I’ve never gone dungeon crawling in a sword.
“Huh, what?” was my initial reaction as well.
In addition to levelling up characters in Disgaea, you can also level up items. You do this by placing the item in your item bag and speaking to Elise who will then whisk you away to Item World. Once there, you can choose to enter any item you have in your item bag.
At this point, I should mention there are creatures living in items.
“Huh, what?” was my initial reaction as well.
Angels on a pinhead, demons in a sword
Item residents come in three varieties: foes, bosses and specialists.
The foes are straightforward. They hate you and want you to die. Clearing a level, which raises an item’s level by one, requires killing every single foe. Once you do that, you descend to the next level.
Bosses are tough foes who hate you and want you to die and can be found on every tenth level of an item. Once you defeat a boss, you’re given the option of returning to the Overlord’s Castle.
Specialists are the most important residents in an item. They hate you and want you to die but they also hate all other foes. A Specialist will immediately attack the closest foe if you’re not conveniently located within hitting distance. However, it’s in your best interests to defeat a Specialist yourself as doing so will help with item modification.
Kitbashing
Item modification, like so many things in Disgaea, is decidedly odd. You modify an item by transferring specialists from one item to another. By transferring specialists, you can improve a sword’s attack rating, cause foes to sleep when hit by a spear or inflict elemental damage with an axe.
The catch is you can only transfer specialists if you’ve defeated them and unfortunately, defeating Specialists isn’t always easy as they’re often killed by foes before you can even get to them.
Aside from item improvement, Item World battles are a good way of levelling up characters and raising Hell. (Hell would be the currency in Netherworld.)
So, there are a lot of incentives to visit Item World but the game actually forces you to try it out in one of the early chapters.
Live by the sword, don’t die in a sword
Item World can be tough early in the game because you cannot save or ordinarily exit during one of these Item World sojourns until you defeat a boss and ten levels of constant battling without a visit to the Netherworld Hospital to replenish health or spell points can wear a party down by sheer attrition.
There are two ways to avoid a party wipeout in Item World. The first method is to quickly descend to the next level using a Dimension Gate. This will speed things up but it’s not as easy as it might sound since these Gates are randomly placed. One might be right next to the Base Panel while another might be a considerable distance away with a whole menagerie of foes between your party and the Gate.
Fortunately, there’s easier way out of Item World: Mr Gency’s Exit.
Em Arr Gency Exit.
Ho ho.
Mr Gency’s Exit is a single-use item which allows you to exit and subsequently return to the last item level you were on. One will be provided to you before you visit Item World for the first time and you’ll get one every time you defeat an item boss. Make sure you always have one in your item bag before you take a trip to Item World.
Just got Disgaea the other day. It’s character generation reminds me of the Ogre Battle Series (vaguely) whcih is why everyone kept recommending it to me, though I am not a fan of Tactics RPG’s in general. I like the idea of lvl’ing your items via item world, though some maps that are spawned are literally impossible to beat. I.E. last monster on island 8 squares away, and portal is too high to jump or throw to. I notice everyone saying about getting a Mr Gency’s Exit from “before you visit item world for the first time” which is not always true. I completed 3 item worlds to lvl 10 before I was given the exit item by the NPC. It all depends on what you try to do first. My biggest question though is: how do you figure out what lvl monsters are in a specific items world before going there? 230-250’s seem to be lvl 2-5. but as I said earlier, I have not done many item worlds yet, and I tried doing a ninja sword world, but monsters start out at lvl 8. and its very common # like 200+…so anyone have a more specific way to determine monster lvl to item?
I found some of the Item World levels impossible as well. It wasn’t until I completed the game that I discovered one of the character professions, which I hadn’t bothered trying, had a greater throwing range than the others. I thought it was very sneaky of the designers but I can’t say I was left feeling robbed.
The monster levels in Item World depend on the item’s rarity or rank. The higher the rank, the tougher the Item World foes. There’s a FAQ on GameFAQs for the PS2 version that provides a table.
When entering the Item world initially it shows the general enemy level for the first item world floor, each level goes up by a bit (a technical term for: 5-10 levels maybe?). And yes the Rogue is awesome, I named mine Trebuchet, because I use him to launch stronger allies into the middle of heated battle.
You don’t need to kill every enemy in item world for the item to gain a level. Just make it to the next level.
You always get a Mr gencys exit if you beat all the enemies that are on every 10th lvl. If you look up ‘bonus’ on that level (10,20,30) Mr gencys exit is always the first item you get
here are some good hints too
‘Stronger enemies’ passed in the dark assembly has an effect on the item world as well.
A good way to lvl up faster is to find an item that has a statistician. Each lvl of statistician gives another % of experience your character recieves when it kills an enemy.
Armsmaster impromes the rate at which your efficiency in the weapon type you have it on increases. So if you subdued an armsmaster on a sword, the sword skill will lvl up quicker for the character that has it equipped (this is a good way to unlock the EDF soldier when you need to have a gun skill at 30)